Despite the rain and my empty belly, I hesitated by the old wheelhouse with the door keys in one hand and the slowly cooling curry in the other, looking out at the dark water for what turned into a minute or two, feeling a little lonely all of a sudden, and then – in my defence, almost immediately – a bit ashamed for feeling sorry for myself. The gentle background roar of the unsleeping city filled the sodium-stained skies and I stood listening for the river’s dark, liquidic music in vain.
From my parents’ house, in Helensburgh, thirty kilometres down the north bank of the Clyde from Glasgow, I could see the river from my bedroom. I grew up watching the distant cranes of Greenock gradually disappear as the shipyards closed, to be replaced, later, by offices, shops, housing developments and leisure facilities. By then we’d moved to Glasgow itself to be near my father’s new dental practice in the city centre. Our first-floor flat in the leafy South Side was big – my brother Iain and I had rooms easily twice the size of those we’d had in the bungalow in Helensburgh – but the outlook was to the broad, tree-lined street, the parked cars and the tall red sandstone tenements like ours on the far side. I missed the view of river and hill more than I’d expected.
I met Jo on a river cruise one sticky summer night, Ceel in Sir Jamie’s glittering new penthouse at Limehouse Tower, during a storm.
‘You’re the guy did that Cat Stevens cover. Didn’t you get sued?’
Late summer, 2000. I was still doing the Capital Live! pre-midnight programme at the time and had been talking to my then producer near the stern of the little river cruise boat. We had been watching the metallic shells of the Thames Barrier pass – each one like a sinking ship, up-ended, the last of the sunset’s ruby light flaring from their summits – when this crop-haired, blond semi-goth with lots of facial metalwork barged in between us.
Producer Vic stepped back to give her room, looked the girl up and down, decided I probably didn’t mind being interrupted by her, raised his eyebrows at me and wandered off.
I did a bit of entirely justifiable sizing-up myself – the girl was all in black: DMs, jeans, scoop-necked vest, battered-looking biker’s jacket off one shoulder. About mid-twenties. ‘I wasn’t exactly sued,’ I said warily, wondering if I was talking to a journalist. ‘There was an exchange of lawyers’ letters that seemed to cost as much as serious litigation, but we managed to avoid an actual writ.’
‘Right.’ The girl nodded vigorously. ‘Oh. Jo LePage,’ she said, holding out a hand to shake while nodding back towards the glass superstructure of the boat, where music thudded and impressive-ten-years-ago disco lights flashed. ‘I’m with Ice House,’ she explained. ‘The record company. You’re Ken Nott, the DJ, right?’
‘Right.’ I shook her hand.
‘Right. What was that song? “Rushdie and Son”?’
‘Uh-huh. But the tune was mostly “Moonshadow”.’
‘Ha. Right. What was it? “I’m being shadowed by a fundamentalist…?”’ she sang, huskily but in tune.
‘Nearly,’ I said. ‘It was, “I’m being stalked by a fundamentalist. I think I’m being shadowed.”’ I spoke rather than sang the lyrics. I was still feeling wary of the girl. Just because she said she was from the record company didn’t mean she really was. I had already given at least one interview without knowing it, one drunken, loved-up night to a girl in a club who turned out to be a reporter for a tabloid with a dreadfully unreconstructed attitude to drugs and drug-taking. The resulting interview had nearly got me fired and started an argument between Capital Live! and the paper about whether she’d told me she was a reporter at the start of our conversation or not. I’d claimed she hadn’t but it was just possible she had and I’d not been listening because I was too busy grinding my teeth and staring at her tits.
Jo had rather impressive breasts, too; not large, but high and bra-less beneath her top. The deck lights strung above us showed her nipples as little sharply defined bumps raising the thin black cotton.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I heard it at a party once. Never did get hold of a copy.’
‘Well, I’d love to, ah, provide you with one,’ I said, grinning, ‘but I don’t even have a copy myself any more.’
‘Sorry,’ she said, smiling. ‘I wasn’t trying to blag one.’ She pushed her hand through her spiky blond hair, exposing ink-dark roots in an unselfconsciously endearing gesture and looked back briefly at the main party.
‘What do you do at Ice House?’ I asked her.
She shrugged. ‘Bit of A &R, bit of what my boss calls asset management. Looking after bands.’
‘Anyone I might have heard of?’
‘Hope so. Addicta? Heard of them?’
‘Yeah. Heard the hype, certainly.’
She shook her head emphatically. ‘Not hype. They are really good.’
‘Right. I saw an interview with them. The lead singer seemed a bit full of himself.’
She grinned. ‘And your point would be?’
I smiled. ‘Yeah, I guess it kind of comes with the territory.’
‘They’re okay,’ she said. ‘The band. Brad can sound arrogant but he’s just being honest in a way; he’s good and he knows it and he isn’t into false modesty.’
‘Woh-no,’ I agreed. ‘I don’t think he’ll ever be accused of that.’
She looked around. ‘So. Enjoying the cruise?’
‘No.’ I sighed. ‘I hate these things,’ I said to her quizzical expression. ‘Well, apart from what happened to the Marchioness… I always feel trapped. You can’t get off. A normal party or gig or do, you can always bale out and head for the door. One of these things, you’re along for the whole ride, whether you’re totally bored or… well, the opposite of bored. A couple of times I’ve met somebody and, ah, you know, been getting on exceptionally well with them-’
‘Ah. A female somebody.’
‘A female somebody of the complementary gender of choice, indeed, and we’ve suddenly found ourselves in an ungregarious mood and wanted to be somewhere together, just the two of us, and… well, we’ve had a very frustrating wait for the end of the cruise.’
She smiled widely and took a bottle of beer from one jacket pocket. ‘You make a habit of picking up women on these cruises?’
‘Just twice so far.’
‘Of course you could always have joined the metre-under club, or whatever you’d call it, fucking in the loos in the boat.’
‘You know,’ I said, frowning as though this had just occurred to me, ‘I’ve never known a relationship that started in a toilet last very long. Odd that. Hmm.’
‘Why are you looking at me like that?’
‘Beg your pardon. Counting your piercings.’
‘Uh-huh?’
‘Uh-huh. Seven, that I can see.’
‘Ha,’ she said, and hoisted her T-shirt to show a belly button neatly cinched with a little bone-shaped metal rod.
‘Eight,’ I said.
She drank and wiped her lips with the back of one hand, left her mouth hanging open, her tongue running along the inside of her lower teeth as she nodded and made an obvious job of measuring me up. ‘Nine, altogether,’ she said, and performed a little movement that made me think at first she was taking a bow, then I realised she was making as though to look down at herself.
‘My,’ I said. ‘Must be fun going through airport metal detectors. ’
Her brows furled a little. ‘Everybody says that.’ She shrugged. ‘Not a problem.’